Related Link:

The U.S. and other developed countries are struggling with slow growth, leading to stagnant living standards and large pools of unemployed and underemployed workers. But as in the past, new waves of technological innovation have the potential to lift growth. One such innovation wave is the Internet of Everything.

….could raise the level of U.S. gross domestic product by 2%-5% by 2025. This gain from the IoE, if realized, would boost the annual U.S. GDP growth rate by 0.2-0.4 percentage points over this period, bringing growth closer to 3% per year. This would go a long way toward regaining the output—and jobs—lost in the Great Recession.

Especially important was the possibility of using the Internet of Everything to make worker training more efficient. The report noted that:

The Internet of Everything also has the potential to completely transform the training of workers. Because one essential feature of IoE is better feedback loops between things and people, it becomes easier to build worker training right into the equipment itself.

Picking up on this idea, the thoughtful Reihan Salam wrote a piece for National Review Online entitled The Internet of Everything and On-the-Job-Training. Salam observed that “[t]he idea of technologies that can actively guide us to become more productive is an attractive one.”

For example, imagine a“connected basketball” with sensors built into it. Such a basketball could help players learn the right form for dribbling and shooting, giving them immediate feedback on how to improve.

The gain is that the system could provide the same feedback as a skilled coach, at a fraction of the cost. The net result would be an increase in the number of young players with sound fundamentals.

In a similar way, the IoE can alter the underlying economics of worker training for a wide variety of jobs that need a combination of physical and cognitive skills. The problem now is that on-the-job training is very expensive for companies, since they have to pay experienced trainers as well as the new workers. As the policy memo notes:

If on-the-job training could be made much cheaper and more efficient with the IoE, then it would be easier for companies to justify hiring unskilled and semi-skilled workers. The U.S. would be able to chip away at the pool of unemployed workers and raise the skill level of the workforce.

This ‘automation’ of the training process is especially important for the long-term personnel needs of the health care system, which requires a large number of skilled workers who can deal with both ever-changing technology and the complicated processes of dealing with people.

The Internet of Everything would release health care workers from rote tasks, while improving their training and productivity. The second part—the use of the IoE to improve training and extend it to more people—is as important as the first.

###

The contents or opinions in this feature are independent and may not necessarily represent the views of Cisco. They are offered in an effort to encourage continuing conversations on a broad range of innovative technology subjects. We welcome your comments and engagement.

We welcome the re-use, republication, and distribution of "The Network" content. Please credit us with the following information: Used with the permission of http://thenetwork.cisco.com/.